Jane and the Unpleasantness at Scargrave - Stephanie Barron [110]
Except that you were saved the trouble, I thought, your uncle's death having, like Fate, intervened. The Earl's sudden passage had allowed George Hearst to achieve his dearest aims—the preservation of his beloved's honour, and the awarding of his dearest wish, a clergyman's living. But I kept such thoughts to myself.
“And now tell me, Miss Austen,” the gentleman said, “how came you to know all of this? Or did you merely hazard some well-researched guesses?”
I had the grace to blush. “I overheard your conversation in the library that evening—some few words.”
George Hearst looked his surprise. “I was not aware of it. I confess that I was distraught, and left the library in great perturbation of mind.”
“And now that the Earl is dead,” I said, “what is to become of Rosie?”
“When I journeyed to London Christmas Eve, it was with the intent of marrying her; and so I have done,” the curate told me. “Rosie is to remain with her grandmother^ and the babe to be reared here for some years. Afterwards, it shall be sent away to school, in an anonymous fashion, to receive the education of a gentleman's child.”
“Rosie is indeed fortunate,” I told him. “She is yet young, and might, with proper care and education, make you a suitable wife, Mr. Hearst. In a living far from Scargrave, where her antecedents are not known, you might yet attain tolerable happiness.”
“I have not learned to look that far beyond the present moment,” he said thoughtfully. “Much remains to be resolved.”
It was then I remembered—if Fitzroy Payne hanged, George Hearst should become the Earl. What a burden this wife should then be felt! For he should be barred from seeking a suitable partner to his new estate, of fortune and standing in the peerage, and must acknowledge Rosie's babe as his heir. I understood, now, his inveterate melancholy; George Hearst's was a fate that seemed ever destined to turn awry.
I RETURNED TO PORTMAN SQUARE IN SOME PERPLEXITY OF thought. I had learned much in recent days of the private lives of Fanny Delahoussaye and George Hearst—had ever a great family been so determined in bastardy?—but nothing that proved useful, on the face of it, to Isobel's cause. The trial was to take place on the ninth of January, making it less than six days that remained to us. More than my circumspect probing was required, if the Countess's innocence was to be shown; and I felt impatience, of a sudden, for the return of Mr. Cranley from Pall Mall, and such assistance as the valet Danson could offer.
5 January 1803
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IT WAS NOT MR. CRANLEY I WAS TO SEE IN THE SCARGRAVE House drawing-room the following morning, however, but my dear Eliza—and with her, brother Henry, only recently become a banker after a turn with the Oxfordshire militia.
“Jane, Jane!” he cried, embracing me heartily; “I understand you have run away from brother James and his scolding wife these several weeks, and got yourself into worse scandal than before! A broken engagement, and now a murder trial? What shall people say? That Miss Jane Austen is become an Adventuress, and is not to be seen in polite society?”
“Nonsense, Henry,” Eliza said briskly; “Jane but seizes her chance for amusement when it is offered, as ever you would do; there is very little to choose between you, but your sex and the freedom it apportions to one and not the other. Were you not both possessed of lively spirits and unconventional tastes, I should have spurned the Austens entirely, and be still resident in France, toying tenderly with one of Buonaparte's generals.”
“Indeed, I shall not berate you,” Henry said, with a glance for his lively wife from those large grey eyes, so like my own; “I have ever trusted Jane to find her way out of scrapes as readily